Stacey Kalish2015-03-31T14:45:13-04:00Stacey Kalishhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=stacey-kalishCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Stacey KalishGood old fashioned elbow grease.Invictus We Trusttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.4031922009-12-28T13:48:27-05:002011-05-25T15:00:22-04:00Stacey Kalishhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-kalish/
Big enough for my sister and I, barely knowing what a scrum was, to plead and whine and insist we had to be a part of this cultural event that felt like some kind of national Xanax. The fact that we managed to organize tickets seemed like the first good omen of the day as I excitedly painted my chunky pubescent face with the new South African flag colors. I didn't even care that our seats were separated and I had to sit alone, which was a fairly daunting prospect for a 15-year-old in a crowd of 65,000 people at Ellis stadium.

While the details of the game are hazy in my memory, reflecting back on the day instantly triggers a montage of freewheeling emotions. I remember sitting next to an Afrikaans man. Now hard to believe, but I didn't actually know any Afrikaans people growing up. Yes, I was white, but I was Jewish and so existed in my liberal sheltered bubble of an insular community that was just glad the Apartheid government didn't hate us more than the blacks. I was young and naïve, consumed by mundane teenage fare like my boy crush and how to convince my parents to buy me those jeans. The insidious political evils that were just over the highway and beyond those barbed wire walls could only bury themselves deep in my subconscious, waiting dormant to haunt me later.

But here was this Afrikaaner guy and he seemed nice enough. I quietly sat next to him, scanning the crowds, soaking up the atmosphere of thousands of fans singing 'Ole ole ole ole.' Every now and then, I would turn to Mr. Afrikaaner and timidly ask, "Sorry meneer, what just happened? Did we get the ball? What did the ref just flag?" Near the end, I was squeezing his arm like a woman in labor as the game went into overtime. When the final whistle blew declaring South Africa the victor, he hoisted me on his shoulders as we fist punched the air and screamed like banshees along with an ecstatic country incredulous at this David and Goliath feat we had just witnessed.

The drive home was even better. Hanging out the windows of cars, people screaming and high-fiving, singing, hugging and dancing in the streets, dragging stools and tables from the bars placing them in the center of the road as they sat down to toast their beers. Everyone passing just beeped in unison, drivers patient for what seemed like the first time in a city known for its aggression and lack of road rules. For this one moment, it didn't matter if you were Black or White or Colored or English or Jewish or Afrikaans. We partied like the Rainbow Nation they said we could be. And you knew, This Is Big.

And I assume that's what Clint Eastwood understood when he decided to make Invictus, a movie about the 1995 Rugby World Cup that tells how a newly elected Mandela (Morgan Freeman) had the prescience to realize the power of sports as a political tool capable of bringing together a fractured country on the brink of civil war. Almost 15 years later, I wondered what it was going to feel like to 'relive' that surreal experience and just hoped that the film stayed true to the events and avoided the Hollywood schmaltz that often sensationalizes historical matters.

All objectivity was quickly conceded before the lights went down in the movie theater, which was a smart move seeing I cried from the minute I heard Shosholuza (a South African folk song) play over the opening titles and the tears continued to roll along with the end credits.

Now, I have discussed the movie with many non-South African friends and colleagues all of whom have had varying reactions stemming from the 'hated it' to the 'hope it gets nominated' kind. None of which matches the emotional aneurysm I experienced. I didn't even attempt to critically analyze a film that I was so personally invested in. This film was something far more for me. It was a cathartic outlet and an emotional validation for an experience that was too big to process for many years after.

Right after I saw the film, I happened to read an article in the New York Times about the German actor and musician Jan Josef Liefers, who grew up in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. What particularly resonated with me about this story was the part where he talks about going to a dinner organized for Jane Fonda shortly after the fall of the Wall, and when the actress asked him about life under Communist rule he was dumbstruck. "I wanted so badly to tell her everything about East Germany, but I had no idea where to begin. I had no idea where to start it." His inability to explain his life back then stuck with him and influenced his years of silence.

For a long time I had no words when asked what it was like to grow up in South Africa. I struggled to express the colors and the smells and the fears and the passion and the ambivalence towards a country of such extreme beauty and evil. I certainly could not describe that day in 1995, or what it was to experience living in a country's snapshot of realized potential. My tears during the film were not just from nostalgic sentiment and associative happiness but more out of relief that finally, here were pictures that I could point to when I am left searching for words.
]]>Cable to Undergo the Knifetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2008:/theblog//3.795992008-01-03T16:46:49-05:002011-05-25T12:20:21-04:00Stacey Kalishhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-kalish/
As the writer's strike soldiers on with no presumable end in sight, another rippling effect is becoming apparent on the TV landscape. The strike's repercussions first became evident when the talk shows started airing annoying reruns. Then came the realization that we can expect to see a major increase in reality programming next season (up to 27 hours per week) in broadcasters' attempts to sidestep the need for writers. And if this foreshadowing of next season's programming wasn't ominous enough -- cable is about to be recycled.

CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves assuaged reporters' fears at a Global Media & Communications Conference in New York recently by announcing the network's contingency plans for the prolonged strike. This includes importing edited versions of edgy series from CBS-owned premium cable channel Showtime. They want to drag the best of the cable shows and "repurpose" them for broadcast standards.

"There are some shows on that network that we think would work well on CBS," he said.

Showtime's hits include Dexter, about a serial killer; Weeds, about drug dealing in the suburbs; crime drama Brotherhood; and Californication, about a novelist who's down on his luck.

Added CBS chief research officer David Poltrack, "There's no reason why that wouldn't translate from pay cable to broadcast."

Are you serious?

Besides my initial shock that anyone would attempt to mess with Weeds, my subsequent thoughts turned to how exactly the network plans on turning a serial-killer vigilante or a pot-dealing soccer mom into PG fodder. How about we get Dexter to tickle his victims to death? Or encrypt the whole drug element of Weeds so it becomes just a mythic allusion, a la Scooby Doo?

While it's obviously positive that cable shows can receive a larger audience by migrating to network channels, how will they survive the translation process? Can these cable shows endure such sanitization when the strength of the writing relies heavily on the risqué sex, quirky but crass characters, and bleep-free dialogue? There is the case of a safer Sex and the City whose resurrection has proved to be a huge success for TBS. But watching the kosher version one night, I could only smirk at best, and missed the 'laugh out loud' reaction to the dirty days when Samantha, while in down-dog position, would turn to the guy next to her in yoga class and say, "Wanna fuck?"

It just seems absurd to mess with what's not broken. The reason Entourage, Dexter, Weeds, and The Tudors largely work is because of the adult content. So it's not just inappropriate, but really, just irresponsible to inject them into family-viewing primetime. It's not to say these shows are laudable for their nipples and profanity (there are plenty of other online outlets for that), but it's their edginess and the scripts' unpredictability that make them so provocative. It's not always pretty, but it's often disturbingly humorous. When Mary Louise Parker is trying to shake down a fellow dealer, you're suddenly watching them 'shake down' in the middle of an alley on the bonnet of her car. Or when her brother Andy uses his unique, digit-lacking foot as his X-factor entry into the world of fetish porn, how exactly do you re-edit that without leaving half the show on the cutting room floor? And if you take that out, you bleed the shock factor and narrative jolt that makes cable worth paying extra for.

Let's hope the strike ends soon and we wont have to worry about the good ol' days when shows liked their sex public and spontaneous and characters said things like "mothafuckah."]]>